From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set by J. Thorn & Tw Brown & Kealan Patrick Burke & Michaelbrent Collings & Mainak Dhar & Brian James Freeman & Glynn James & Scott Nicholson

Author:J. Thorn & Tw Brown & Kealan Patrick Burke & Michaelbrent Collings & Mainak Dhar & Brian James Freeman & Glynn James & Scott Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror, Genre Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Thorn Publishing
Published: 2014-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

Day 171. Welcome gifts and unwelcome news.

It’s been a long day and it’s going to be an even longer night. I don’t think too many people are in a mood to sleep, though Negi has been doing his best to get people to rest, so when their turn comes to stand guard, they aren’t total zombies. Okay, scratch that last bit, inappropriate use of the word given all the shit we’ve been through with the undead.

When I had just joined the Army, I’d wonder why people made such a big deal about regular haircuts and shaving every day. I mean, when you’re sitting on some bloody hill located halfway between nowhere and Hell, who cares if you shave or not? Later on, I got it – small things like shaving make a person feel more in control and give them some degree of normalcy to hang on to. So this afternoon I went down to the city on a little errand. I had every intention of going alone, but Ashok insisted on coming along. I agreed, because I didn’t mind the company or the added pair of eyes.

We had the car we had appropriated from the Taj Mahal Inn, and while it had less than quarter of a tank of gas, I didn’t think we’d need much more. So far, we had been lucky that the Moreko had not trashed it.

We set out deeper into the city. Gangtok had been a small city by most standards, and that had given it a lot of its charm, but the outside world had well and truly intruded in some respects, and the large supermarket called The Loot was an example. We had never tried getting to it, though I suspected it would have a lot of supplies, simply because it was too far inside the city to risk it. But today, I wanted to go deeper in, and not just to get razors and cosmetics.

Our journey to The Loot was uneventful, and I saw that it had already been looted (no pun intended) in the early days of the outbreak. Much of the food was gone but still we got a lot of stuff that we packed into the boot and the back seats. It was when we got closer to the smoke we had seen that I saw something that really freaked me out, and we drove back as fast as we could

Our visitors are now up, and after they are plied with some more tea and food, I look forward to learning more about what they have been through. Everyone is in a great mood, much of their early sense of dread having dissipated. A lot of it came down to the fact that the men were freshly shaved, and the women had all shampooed their hair. Everyone had taken a bath using not just water as we had been but with soap, and everyone was wearing fresh, clean clothes – all courtesy of our little shopping trip.

Negi caught me looking warily at the city and he asked me why I was worried.